Posted on 08/18/2006 7:46:33 PM PDT by AmericanInTokyo
Reports from Seoul Korea, (daily newspaper Joongang Ilbo in Seoul) via the Japanese Jiji press agency, that South Korean intelligence has intercepted radio messages/communications in North Korea, which were aired last month, to civilians in the Kilju County, Northern Hamgyeong Province area of northeastern D.P.R.K., to evacuate.
The source in the South Korean government said "our interpretation is that following North Korea's underground nuclear blast test, they wish to head off any escape of radiation that would be a threat to the nearby civilian population and are evacuating as such."
It has to be. There is no other explanation for it. Some people are just able to survive radiation levels that would kill almost any other person on earth.
I'm out for the night. I have to be up early tomorrow and need some sleep. :-)
Good night. Thanks for the conversation!
If I was evil, I would drop a 50 megatonner on top of their test site and blame the deaths on Kimmy.
If so, he would save the people half of the costs, because with him, only one person needs to go.
The will has gone. I believe that we are living in similar political developments like they were in the 1930s. The worlds democracies are asleep on the switch, letting failed world bodies such as the UN(in the 1930s it was the League of Nations) to punish these rogue nations. We need to take actions (alone if necessary) to bring these "mini fascists"in line. If not, something catastrophic is going to happen much more worse than 9/11.
This is the Age of the Ostrich.
We are soft, fat, and happy -- sated on modern counterparts to "bread and circuses." We are so addicted to "comfort" that we will do anything and everything to avoid even the risk of rocking the boat.
We've traded our birthright for a bowl of pottage. Or to be more precise, for a bowl of sewage. Take a look at the "culture" that our countrymen are glad to protect and preserve even at the loss of our freedom -- endless tabloid "journalism", crap "entertainment", noise "music", and ceaseless sensory stimulation, the more base and primal, the more socially acceptable it's become. Every type of intoxication imaginable, a King' ransom in food, readily available from multiple stores in every town, village, and city in the land. The poorest "peasant" among us lives a better life than the wealthiest and most powerful royalty of but a few mere generations back.
And, too, the meaningless (and endless) parade of sexual "experience" (I hesitate to even use the word "encounters", thanks to the ubiquity of Internet and television pornography).
Rome, at its fall, was no more of a top-heavy, defenseless target than we seem committed to become.
Meanwhile, in certain other lands -- certain critical lands -- children are educated (rather than babysat and programmed to "feel good about themselves"). They are learning hard sciences, engineering, and, of course, intensive Englsh language studies.
We are about to have our lunch eaten, bigtime. It may seem like we're getting it eaten now, but we ain't seen nuthin' yet. And yet, even those adversaries may very well pale by comparison to the roughly one billion adherents to a "faith" firmly rooted in the Dark Ages, committed to our destruction -- committed to deliver it in the most brutal, bloddy way imaginable.
Meanwhile, infesting the entire body politic is the underlying "foundation" of the cultural "faith" -- the unshakable belief that, "It can't happen here!"
Some years back -- back when it was still being produced -- there was a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which the Dad was sarcastically explaining to the kid that back in The Olden Days, they didn't have color -- no color TV, no color movies, no color anything. The world was in Black and White.
That seems to be the way most folks operate. "The past" consists of old, scratchy audio recordings, grainy, jumpy, rough-looking B&W film footage... back then, wars were hard-fought, times were tough... gee, they didn't even have television, let alone color!
The veneer of civilization is microscopically thin, and incredibly fragile. Something as relatively trivial as taking away just the electricity for a week would bring "civilzation" to chaos. I almost said, "to a standstill," but then I thought about it. A standstill would be a mercy, compared to what would actually happen.
Yet, should a real conflict come to our shores, we'll be losing far more than mere electricity. Millions of people will be in a state of utter breakdown. They will simply be incapable of coming to terms with what hit them. Their foundations will have been torn out from under them. One moment, they'll have been absorbed in the neo-gospel -- television "entertainment" -- bathed in the "reality", confident that so long as there was professional production quality, unparalled technical prowess -- everything from lighting to editing to broadcast delivery (not to mention the artfully cultured non-regional "standard inflection" vocal presentation of the "broadcast professionals") -- NOTHING could go wrong.
We're civilized, dammit! We have the best and most comprehensive VIRTUAL "existence" in history! We can see how a monster like Hitler could come to power in a scratchy, grainy, Black-and-White world like the '30s. But it's impossible for anything even remotely possible for something even a fraction of that abomination to exist in our world. We have a world with high-resolution digital television, fergoshsake! It's impossible for that level of ugliness to visit our civilization!
McLuhan was right -- the medium IS "the message" -- and the spinmeisters have lerned that lesson well.
And long-forgotten is the fact that Germany, in its prime, was "the most culturally advanced nation in Europe" -- and by extention, the world. Germany was "civilization" -- advanced civilization.
How do you say, "It can't happen here!" in German? Doubtless countless urbane, cosmopolitan, bon vivant types uttered it until their heads fell off.
I can't believe what we're bringing on ourselves, on our children, on our posterity...
Well, yes, I can believe it, but I wish I couldn't.
Santayana was profoundly accurate.
Wow very very powerful point
Since when did North Korea care about the welfare of its citizens?
Well they keep unloading the free rice that Uncle Sam sends for them.
Army Some 950,000-strong, organized into one armored, four mechanized, 12 infantry, two artillery and one capital-defense corps, the North Korean army can deploy a large part of its forces in combat units, which include 27 infantry divisions, as well as 15 armored and 14 mechanized brigades. There is a heavy concentration on artillery and battlefield missiles, with some 35 gun and 15 missile brigades. Of particular importance are some 120,000 special-operations troops, the largest such force in any of today's armed forces. There are some 25 attack, seaborne and airborne brigades, including a very large number of specialist sniper units. North Korea is reported to have the ability to transport some 10,000 special forces by air at any one time. The army is deployed in an offensive rather than a defensive manner, with the first operational echelon made up of the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Forward Army Corps; the second operational echelon with the 806th and 815th Mechanized, and the 820th Armored Corps; the strategic reserve has the 108th and 425th Mechanized Corps; while the rear echelon has the 3rd, 6th, 7th and 8th Rear Army Corps. Combine these with the other combat units and a total of some 800,000 men appear to be in actual fighting units - a very high proportion of teeth to tail indeed. Weapons Arms and equipment are mostly obsolete Russian and Chinese in origin, although attempts have been made to modernize, mainly through the production of modified designs or new developments by North Korea's burgeoning arms industry. There are currently believed to be some 4,100 T34/85, T54/T55, Type-59, T62 and PT76 tanks, 2,800 armored personnel carriers, 3,500 towed artillery, 4,500 self-propelled artillery and more than 2,600 mobile multiple rocket launchers, some 8,000 mortars, 9,000 anti-tank rocket launchers and more than 8,000 man-portable anti-tank missile systems. North Korea is probably one of the most heavily fortified nations in the world, with some 600 kilometers of tunnels and more than 8,000 deep bunkers, plus caverns that have been enlarged to protect command centers, missile and nuclear facilities, combat aircraft and indeed entire units close to the Demilitarized Zone along the border with the Republic of Korea. Most have been constructed within granite mountains, with the main service entrances facing north. All the most significant military facilities have now been moved to underground facilities believed to be capable of withstanding US bunker-busting bombs. Some 5 million tonnes of ammunition, food and fuel are thought to be stored underground for wartime use. Air defense North Korea has a very large number of SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, though once again of older design, mainly Russian, or Chinese copies of the SA-2, SA-3 and SA-5. Some 15,000 man-portable Wha-sung copies of Russian SA-7 and SA-16 are known to be available. These are backed up by some 12,000 static and mobile anti-aircraft guns, most of which are manually operated and therefore not so vulnerable to modern electronic warfare. Radar early warning and target tracking, command and control, however, are all likely to be overwhelmed in the first few days of a major conflict with the US. Coast defense North Korea's long and rugged coastline is covered by at least six major missile bases with anti-ship systems with a range of up to 160km and many hundreds of well-protected gun emplacements. Air force The 1st (Kaechon AB), the 2nd (Toksan/Hamhung AB) and the elite 3rd (Hwangju AB) air-combat divisions have about 70 modern fortified air bases, many with underground hangars and multiple runways. However, the command-and-control systems, radar, fighter control and aircraft fleet are now largely obsolete and would provide little long-term opposition to the US and South Korean air forces. To try to gain combat experience, it has been reported that North Korea sent more than 200 pilots to fight in the Vietnam War, where they helped to defend Hanoi with some success. A further 25 pilots went to Syria during the June 1967 war with Israel and 30 pilots to Egypt and Syria during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Equipment North Korea is believed to have about 85,000 personnel and some 700 air-defense and strike fighters, including 40 Chinese A5, 140 F5 (MiG-17), 120 F6 (MiG-19) and 40 F7, 180 Russian MiG-21, 18 Su-7BMK and a few more modern types: 36 Su-25, 50 MiG-23 and 40 MiG-29; up to 75 elderly Chinese H-5 (Il-28) bombers, more than 300 helicopters, including 50 Mi-24, and a large fleet of 200 or more transports, mostly ancient Y5 (An-2). Navy The North Korean navy has a strength of about 46,000 and some five to six naval squadrons in the West (Yellow Sea) Fleet based at Nampo (headquarters), Pip'a-got and Sagot and another 10 squadrons in the East Fleet at T'oejo-dong(headquarters), Najin and Wnsan. The main surface combatants and submarines are sheltered in more than 20 reinforced pens, each up to 900 meters long and 22 meters wide. There are some 26 Russian Romeo and Whisky ocean-going submarines and about 65 coastal and mini-submarines used for covert intelligence or special-forces operations; three missile frigates; more than 30 fast missile craft; 110 fast torpedo boats; and several hundred minesweepers, minelayers, patrol and amphibious-warfare craft. Weapons of mass destruction North Korea can produce about 100 missiles a year. It began to make ballistic missiles around 1981, with copies of Russian Scuds purchased originally from Egypt. These became operational as the Hwasong 5 in 1984. There are now 900-1,000 Hwasong-5/6 and Nodong 1/Rodong 1 (improved Scud) and more than 100 medium-range Taepodong 1/Nodong 2 ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads deployed in underground silos or hidden in caves. Within the next couple of years, development of the Taepodong 2/Nodong 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles will be completed and North Korea will gain a genuine strategic deterrent with a range of at least 8,000km, though some observers have suggested as much as 12,000km. This missile was test-fired in July, and despite media speculation that the flight was aborted after just 42 seconds, it now seems likely that it flew for seven minutes and was a significant technical success. Some observers would undoubtedly argue that there is a rather more pernicious reason behind North Korea's long-range-missile and nuclear-weapon programs. With a failing economy to support, the temptation must be strong for the Pyongyang regime to use its advanced technology to underpin its survival. While North Korea is undoubtedly a poor country, it has still managed to develop advanced and effective missile systems. Not even economic failure, famine and a severe lack of human resources have prevented the headlong dash for weapons technology. While such arms are obviously considered vital for defense or even a preemptive strike, the major overriding reason has been financial: such technology is available for export to the highest bidder. Such hard-currency transactions help keep North Korea afloat and the regime in power. Over the past 20 years or so North Korea has earned substantial revenue from the sale of missiles, and the relevant technology, to a number of states high on Washington's hit-list. Among these are the Nodong to Pakistan as the Ghauri and to Iran as the Shehab 3, while both Syria and Libya received Hwasong-5. It is reported that missile parts and technology have also been exported to Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. It appears certain that North Korea's nuclear-weapons program has been largely funded by the sale of missiles and other conventional arms to countries around the world. North Korea is believed to have some 120 nuclear weapons, including a small number of hydrogen bombs to go with its growing arsenal of operational long-range ballistic missiles. It has built a considerable capability since the early 1960s with nuclear-research facilities at Yongbyon, Taechon, Pyongyang and Kumho. Significantly for North Korea, it is fortunate to have its own uranium mines, with more than 4 million tonnes of exploitable high-quality uranium. An advanced chemical and biological warfare program has produced a considerable number of chemical warheads for battlefield missiles, aircraft bombs and artillery shells. These are known to include modern nerve agents. It is believed that a serious attempt has also been made to weaponize anthrax and that a small number of warheads may have been deployed.
morning bump
Too bad so many of South Koreans under the age of 30 don't these days....
The may be dancing in the streets of Seoul if/when Kim Jong il 'pops one off'.
Their logic? a) Korea is One (Chosun nun hana da). b) Our blood brother, North Korea has a nuke c) Therefore Korea has a nuke. How great our Korean People! ("...now standing against those bastard Americans and Japanese donchya know!" (sic)
Lots of important stuff there but it sure is a hard read:')
What was that 7.1 earthquake near Antarctica? N Kor nuke test that happened to hit a live fault?
Wouldn't we have been able to tell?
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